(C) Iowa Capital Dispatch
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Convicted tree thief’s ‘right to survive’ trumps Iowa law, his lawyer argues [1]
['Jared Strong', 'More From Author', '- January']
Date: 2024-01-02
A northwest Iowa man had the right to cut down and take trees from a public wildlife management area because he needed the wood for shelter and heat, his attorney argues.
That argument is part of Jason Lavant Ferguson’s repeated efforts to overrule a jury’s unanimous decision in November that found him guilty of felony theft and 50 timber violations.
The 41-year-old rural Rolfe man was accused of taking more than 100 trees from the Stoddard Wildlife Management Area in Pocahontas County without permission, including a slow-growing bur oak that was about six feet in diameter at its base.
He is set to be sentenced Jan. 26 and faces up to five years in prison for the theft charge and one year apiece for each of the timber violations.
A district court judge last month rejected Ferguson’s claims that an 800-year-old English charter empowers him to take trees from public land and that he deserves a new trial. Subsequently, his attorney expanded on that claim and filed a motion in arrest of judgment, which asks a judge not to impose the jury’s verdict because it was made in error.
“The defendant’s activities can be summarized as cutting wood to rebuild his home and heat his home so he didn’t die from hypothermia,” wrote Ferguson’s attorney, Kevin Fors, of Harcourt. “These are the very acts protected by the (Charter of the Forest) when given in 1215 and reaffirmed in the third version released in 1217 and ratified by later kings.”
Ferguson told state conservation officers that he had planned to use some of the timber to build a house. In seeking a new trial, Ferguson had argued that the English charter’s provisions — which established rights of commoners to use public lands — are part of the United States’ unwritten “common law” that the country retained when it broke from England.
But District Court Judge Derek Johnson decided last month that the charter applies to the forests of England, not the United States.
Nevertheless, Ferguson’s attorney continues to insist that Americans have a fundamental right to harvest lumber and firewood from public land. He pointed to federal provisions that allow people to take trees from national parks under certain circumstances.
“I am arguing in this time and in this place it is morally wrong and legally wrong to prosecute an individual for subsisting on forest products owned by the sovereign,” Fors wrote in his recent motion. “As a human right you have a right to survive even if it doesn’t conform to state imposed restrictions.”
Ferguson was successful last year in defending himself against numerous felony drug and weapons charges that stemmed from the tree theft investigation. The judge decided that search warrants that uncovered evidence of marijuana and methamphetamine production at Ferguson’s property were improperly approved, and that the evidence could not be used to prosecute Ferguson.
It’s unclear when the judge will rule on Fors’ recent arrested-judgment motion.
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https://iowacapitaldispatch.com/2024/01/02/convicted-tree-thiefs-right-to-survive-trumps-iowa-law-his-lawyer-argues/
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